1. Technical Field
This invention relates to gyroscopes and, more particularly, to an angle measuring gauge for motorcycles and the like.
2. Prior Art
Attitude indicating instruments for aircraft and the like provide information about the pitch and roll attitudes of the carrying aircraft and may also provide information about its directional attitude or heading, and wherein the display of attitude information is in the form of a surface of revolution having delineations of regularly spaced meridians that maintain a vertical orientation in space and regularly spaced parallels transverse to the meridians, one of the parallels being an equator that divides the display into upper and lower halves and corresponds to a horizon.
In certain of its forms, such an attitude indicator has a spherical display that is gyro controlled so that regularly spaced meridians delineated on the spherical display are maintained in a vertical orientation in space and regularly spaced parallels that are transverse to the meridians are correspondingly maintained horizontal.
One of the delineated parallels is an equator that divides the displayed sphere into upper and lower hemispheres and corresponds to the horizon. Relatively fixed to the aircraft in substantially centered relation to the display is an indicator or reference that symbolizes the carrying aircraft and relates its attitude to the attitude of the delineated meridians and parallels on the displayed sphere. Typically this reference takes the form of a circle or dot that symbolizes the fuselage of the carrying aircraft to denote pitch and heading attitudes together with aligned horizontal dashes or bars at opposite sides of the circle or dot that symbolize the wings and show roll or banking attitude.
In level flight the airplane symbol is on the equator delineation of the spherical display, and attitudes of climb or dive are indicated by departures of the equator from that symbol, which departures correspond in direction and magnitude to the direction and magnitude of departure of the longitudinal axis of the aircraft from its normal level flight attitude. In like manner, roll attitudes are depicted by the angle between the equator and the wing symbols of the reference.
Thus, the equator of the spherical display provides a horizontal reference to which the pilot relates the attitude of the aircraft in the same way that he relates aircraft attitude to the natural horizon under visual flight conditions. The meridian delineations of the display can be marked in terms of compass headings and can be confined to fixed orientations in space so that the instrument can combine pitch and roll information with information that would otherwise have to be obtained from a separate directional gyro instrument.
Accordingly, a need remains for an apparatus that overcomes the above noted shortcomings and is applicable to motorcycles and other land or sea vehicles, and not limited to aircraft only. The present invention satisfies such a need by providing an angle measuring gauge that is self-contained and displays the degree of forward-aft or side-to-side inclination for a vehicle operator. Such a leveling gauge is intended for land, sea, and air applications and promptly displays the current orientation of the vehicle upon which it is mounted.